John Byrne’s “Facility of Movement” takes place Wednesday afternoons at 1:00 in conjunction with David LaChapelle’s installation in Lever House (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
David LaChapelle: “From Darkness to Light”
Lever House Art Collection, 390 Park Ave. at 54th St.
Exhibition continues through September 2, with free performances Wednesdays at 1:00 through July 13
John Byrne: Transcending Form
Theatre 80, 80 St. Marks Pl. at First Ave.
Wednesdays through August 24, $15, 8:00
212-388-0388
www.theatre80.net
www.leverhouseartcollection.com
facility of movement slideshow
Introduced by nightclub fixture Amanda Lepore, photographer and director David LaChapelle and dancer-choreographer John Byrne dated for three years in the mid-2000s and, remaining close friends, are now collaborating in a different way. LaChapelle recently installed “From Darkness to Light” in the glassed-in Lever House lobby gallery, a combination of photographs and collage that references life and death, from Théodore Géricault’s “Raft of the Medusa” to the creation of humankind. The display features “Chain of Life,” a series of hundreds of connected photographs of nude men and women, dangling from the ceiling and nearly reaching the floor; “Adam Swimming Under a Microscope” and “Eve Swimming Under a Microscope,” intensely colorful circular configurations of waterborne nudes placed directly on the walls as if stained-glass rose windows in a house of worship; and “Raft of Illusion,” which re-imagines “Raft of the Medusa” as a swarm of swirling naked bodies battling the elements. Every Wednesday afternoon at 1:00 through July 13, Byrne, who has performed with such companies as Paul Taylor, Corbin Dance, and Erick Hawkins, is presenting “Darkness to Light: Facility of Movement,” an evolving site-specific piece in which Debra Zalkind, Ryan Braun, Christine Gerena, Vincent Marra, Farrah Olieri, Lior Shneior, Rob Laqui, and Kimberly Mhoon interact with LaChapelle’s installation, making their way through the Lever House lobby as well as the outside courtyard. Dressed like workers from all walks of life on their lunch hour, wearing suits or uniforms that instantly identify them, the dancers weave in around themselves, the works, and random New Yorkers on their own lunch breaks sitting outside, all set to live classical music (including the Jewish prayer “Kol Nidre”) on cello and violin. Admission is free to this wonderful reason to get away from the office for a little while.
John Byrne’s TRANSCENDING FORM takes place Wednesday nights at 8:00 at Theatre 80 in conjunction with David LaChapelle’s installation in Lever House (photo by David LaChapelle)
Byrne and LaChapelle are also collaborating on Transcending Form, Byrne’s first evening-length dance piece. Held Wednesday night through August 24 at Theatre 80 on St. Marks Pl., where LaChapelle had his first studio back in the 1980s, the seventy-minute work features the “Facility of Movement” performers along with Byrne, singer Gina Figueroa, guitarist Juancho Herrera, and the James Solomon Benn Choir. The disjointed, overly feel-good work, which is ostensibly about the creation of life and exploration of love, consists of such sections as “On Endeavor,” “Factory,” “Dysfunction,” “Before, Love,” “Ascend,” and “Compassion,” with music ranging from printer sound effects and Shirley Brown to Schubert and Elvis Presley. LaChapelle contributes art to the piece, photographic fabric images of each of the characters displayed on a clothing line at the back of the ramshackle set. The community-theater-like production, which focuses on Marra as Bambini and Olieri as the Holy Spirit, has a suggested admission of $15 but you can pay what you wish, will all proceeds going to Education in Dance and the Related Arts, which brings the arts to students in more than sixty metropolitan-area public and private high schools.
Part road movie, part film noir, part spiritual quest, the charming Travellers & Magicians will sneak up on you when you least expect it. And just when you’re sure it will become a predictable tale of one man’s choice between a simple, beautiful, struggling village and the promise of wealth in America, it twists and turns and leaves you with an ear-to-ear smile and an ache in your heart. After scoring an international hit with The Cup (1999), writer-director Khyentse Norbu, who is also the Tibetan Buddhist His Eminence Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, the third incarnation of a principal lama, decided to make a film in his native Bhutan, a tiny country amid the vast Himalayas. Using untrained actors, Norbu tells the story of Dondup (Tshewang Dendup), a cigarette-smoking city dweller who comes to work in a small village that bores him. He listens to loud pop music and keeps his hair long, readying to go to the States to make money. He shuns the Buddhist tradition and is always in a hurry, never able to relax and look within himself or at the stunning country around him. While waiting for a ride on the deserted mountain roads, he is joined by an old apple picker, a rice paper maker and his daughter, and a young monk who plays the dramyin; the latter begins telling a mystical tale of loyalty, spirituality, brotherly love, faith, riches, and murder. The first feature-length film to be shot in Bhutan, Travellers & Magicians starts off somewhat slowly and obvious, with Dondup’s character over the top, but stick with it; the music, locations, and storytelling eventually come together like magic. Travellers & Magicians is screening Friday night at the Rubin Museum as part of the Pilgrimage & Faith series, being held in conjunction with the exhibit “Pilgrimage and Faith: Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam,” and will be introduced by anthropologist Laurel Kendall. Admission to the museum is free on Friday nights, so be sure to check out the other current exhibits as well, which include “Patterns of Life: The Art of Tibetan Carpets,” “Masterworks: Jewels of the Collection,” “Body Language,” and “Quentin Roosevelt’s China.” (The series continues July 15 with Ismaël Ferroukhi’s Le Grand Voyage, July 22 with Luis Buñuel’s The Milky Way, July 29 with Edmund Goulding’s The Razor’s Edge,” and August 5 with Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Canterbury Tales.)
